It was funny. Really funny. Hanks and Hoffman and Adams give great performances. I’ve never been a huge Julia Roberts fan, but she did alright too. Sorkin wrote the screenplay and in some ways the movie was like a really good season 2 WW episode, with only a long walk and talk missing (and of course with one scene in particular – I’m thinking of an office scene with two conversations going on at once – you get the next best thing to a walk and talk and with a fun pay off at the end). Sorkin can bring the funny.
So go see it, and if you can, might I suggest catching a 9 o’clock showing on Hilton Head? You’ll just about have the theater to yourself. I don’t know if only 10 people came to the opening night showing because it’s December on Hilton Head Island (which means no one is here) or because the people who are here like to watch a lot of matinées (the better to catch the early bird dinner specials). Or maybe this movie is going to tank at the box office because no one has quite figured out how to sell a semi-feel good, comedic, political movie that comes complete with a happy ending. Of course, the ending is happy only so long as you forget that an argument could be made that the actions of the movie’s protagonists directly resulted in a little event known as 9/11. Which is a bit heavy.
But the movie is funny. Really funny. It is laugh out loud funny. And you should go see it.
Happy Election Day! At my polling place I was #60 for the A – Ks. The line wasn’t out the door, but it was nearly to the door (about 15 people deep). At the time it was a gloomy morning, dark and rainy… This makes me wonder if turnout will actually be high today (for an off year election). I hope everyone gets a chance to exercise their constitutionally protected rights today.
I have come to love Election Day. It is, for me, like Christmas (even though sometimes it is like the Christmas when I was six and woke to find Castle Grey Skull missing from under the tree)…
The anticipation begins the night before, on Election Eve, when I plan my trip to the local church that serves as polling place and make one last scan of the papers and candidate websites. (Yeah, I cram for voting info as if preparing for a history mid-term.)
View from the car tonight as I approached my polling place. Video would have better shown the driving rain and the crashing booming thunder and lightning.
And now a mid day respite courtesy of Aaron Sorkin, creator of The West Wing, as excepted from his Forward to The West Wing Script Book – Six Teleplays by Aaron Sorkin.
(because what else would I be doing on a rainy Wednesday afternoon?)
All we needed was the President. We had an idea list that went from Alan Alda to Jason Robards to Sidney Poitier. Then one afternoon my assistant, Lauren Carpenter, stepped into my office–
* DailyKos makes a crazy fraud accusation.
* Rick Santorum shows up on TV for no apparent reason.
* Katie Couric mispronounces a U.S. state name.
* Chris Matthews.. spittle becomes visible to the home audience.
* A black voter is interviewed about not getting to vote.
Sarah Vowell returned to GW’s Lisner Auditorium last night for a reading, question and answer session, and book signing.The show was to begin at 8pm but 8pm came and went without any sign of my favourite author. Shortly after the expected start time a woman came to the stage and announced that Vowell had been delayed on account of issues with her train. In the meantime, they played the Fresh Air interview from several years ago when Sarah was out promoting The Partly Cloudy Patriot. The interview ended and still no Sarah. Music played. A little while later the woman came back to the podium, this time with a phone. She held the cell phone to the podium microphones and the distinctive voice of Ms. Sarah Vowell filled the auditorium.
We listened as Sarah described her drive through the city…
“There is the Washington monument which I think I am on record of pretty much hating. Oh there are the lights blinking at the top of it.”
She also speculated on how we were handling the delay, as if we were stuck in some sort of historical blackout situation.
“…You’re offering each other snacks from your purses… and um you’re comparing, you’re comparing notes of which of my stories are your favourite… you’re making new friends…Maybe, you know, nine months from now babies will be born…”
After taking a question or two from the audience the woman thanked the wayward voice and hung up the phone. Not long afterwards and without further fanfare or announcement Sarah Vowell hurried out to the stage. She apologized and explained how Acela trains don’t work well without power and that she’d been stuck on the train for three hours without food and water and oxygen. Then an “emergency train” came to pick them up, but Sarah explained how the people on the “emergency train” thought of the train as just their regular train and acted slightly put out by the need to share space with those “Acela people.”
Vowell then read several passages from Assassination Vacation… the first about Lincoln, the other about Garfield. The part about Garfield was less about our 20th President and more about the Oneida Commune, or as the members of the commune referred to it, the OC. The OC was a utopian commune that practised free love until as all good things must, the community broke up. This happened mostly because, as Sarah puts it, the leader was “bogarting all the teenage girls.” Anyways, I loved how she was able to work one of my favourite, frivolous shows into an historical treatise on Presidential assassins. Real genius.
After reading from her book Vowell moved on to a few recent columns she’s been writing for her hometown paper. For a moment I was thinking, “That’s cool, she’s going back to her roots and writing for the Bozeman Gazette or whatever they call it in Montana.” But of course she meant her other hometown paper, the Grey Lady, the New York Times.
The pieces read from the Times were the most stridently partisan writing I’ve heard from her to date and I think some of the crowd was surprised. But, the surprise was unwarranted. They only needed to have read either of her last two books to know that Sarah Vowell is a big lefty with few nice things to say about the current administration. I laughed and applauded even if others around me did not.
Then it was time for questions and answers. And people asked some of the typical “how did you get into writing?” and “who should be the next president” sort of questions. About half way through I started raising my hand and finally, after going into some deep political tangents she called last question and then picked me because I’d been rather persistent she said.
“So about The OC,” I began. “Do you think the show has jumped the shark? Do you think it maybe jumped the shark a few weeks ago when Johnny fell off the cliff?” I sat back and listened as she repeated the question for the sake of the audience. People had already begun to leave in large clumps and my less than academic question was not one to keep people rooted to their seats. But you have to admit it was a fun one.
Sarah quickly recapped for the audience how there was a character (Johnny) who while cute and likeable was also slightly annoying and had gotten his heart broken and decided to get drunk and then on account of his broken, drunken heart he fell from a cliff and then died.
Vowell apologized for ruining it for the rest of the audience and then went on to say that yes the writing seems to have diminished, but she still watches every week. She said that for her the draw of the show was the Cohen family, the marriage between Sandy and Kirsten and their son Seth who is so smart and funny. At least I’m pretty sure that’s what she said because I was still so psyched about having actually been allowed to ask my question in the first place that I was having trouble paying attention.
After my question she thanked the audience for sticking it out and waiting and then she left for the book signing part. The line that formed snaked from the main lobby, back into the auditorium, and down the aisles until it was about midway to the stage. We moved steadily shifting our feet and advancing every few minutes. When finally it was my turn I handed her the book and cutting off all chance for small talk blurted out, real smooth like, “Brian with an I.” It was not even as clever as the last time I had her sign my book. That time I blurted out, “I was a band geek too!” To which she asked me what instrument I played and then gave a sort of raised eyebrow, snarky remark because everyone knows trombones are always the goof offs in the band.
This time I merely thanked her for answering my question about the OC and then happily took my signed book and headed for the metro. Maybe someday I’ll be able to talk with strangers or celebrities but for now I’ll just smile and maybe adopt the Sarah Vowell motto… “It Could Be Worse.”
From The Partly Cloudy Patriot:
“Though nothing bad has ever happened to me, everytime I’ve had my heart broken or gotten fired or watched an audience member at one of my readings have a seizure as I stand at the podium trying not to cry, I remind myself that it could be worse. In my self-help universe, when things go wrong I whisper mantras to myself, mantras like “Andersonville” or “Texas School Book Depository.” Andersonville is a code word for “You could be one of the prisoners of war dying of disease and malnutrition in the worst Confederate prison, so just calm down about the movie you wanted to go to being sold out.” “Texas School Book Depository” means that having the delivery guy forget the guacamole isn’t nearly as bad as being assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald as the blood from your head stains your wife’s pink suit. Though, ever since I went to Salem, I’m keen on “Gallows Hill.” As in, being stuck in the Boise airport for ten hours while getting hit on by a divorced man with “major financial problems” on his way to his twentieth high school reunion is irksome, but not as dire as swinging by the neck on Salem’s Gallows Hill.”
Some thoughts after seeing Charlie Wilson’s War…
Election Day is here! Woot!
I know exactly who you are… 
2006 Midterm Drinking Game 
